Maxine Peake As Hamlet enabled me to re-watch last year’s astonishing stage production directed by Sarah Frankcom at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre. Although I have already reviewed the production here (where I focus on gender), the filmed version shown at The Cornerhouse Cinema, Manchester on April 2, 2015, gave me the opportunity to concentrate on how cleverly the production tackles the theme of madness. Continue reading →

The program accompanying Maria Aberg’s production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing sets the intellectual mood for the performance. Its main body consists of three articles. The first article ‘Stranger in the House’ by Julie Summers describes life in Britain after the Second World War. Women (wives, girlfriends and mothers) are highlighted for their roles in helping soldiers settle back into civilian and family life. During the war, however, some young women enjoyed a hedonistic lifestyle created by a patriarchal free society, especially when the American GI’s landed on British soil. Therefore, post-war Britain became blighted by divorce and unwanted pregnancies. The second article ‘An Age of Uncertainty’ by Scott Ferguson marks the birth of Government state surveillance developed from spying in the Second World War. An epidemic of phone tapping, miniaturised bugging devices hidden in offices and homes and intercepted mail plagued a suspicious world divided by conflict. In ‘Reading Between [Blurred] Lines: Staging Shakespeare’s Women Today’, Benjamin Fowler examines a subtle undermining of patriarchal power in Much Ado About Nothing. What is particularly interesting is Fowler’s discussion of Innogen who is Hero’s mother, and Leonata’s wife, as the epitome of the silent female. Her mysterious appearance as the stage direction Innogen his wife on only two occasions (the beginning of acts 1 & 2) in the Quarto and Folio led to her deletion in 1733 by Lewis Theobald. She has rarely been seen since.

Following Michael Elliott’s version of King Lear, Brian Blessed creates a menacing Medieval world. Images of the full moon, Stonehenge-like stone slabs, naked flames, white-robed priests and sharp blades profilerate. He also uses a rug-like map spread on the floor. At this point, a jovial Lear (played by Blessed) enjoys Goneril’s and Regan’s flattery. He responds by dividing the map with a stick, an insignificant act if it wasn’t for Lear’s linguistic flourish that first rewards Goneril for her professed love:

Of all these bounds, even from this line to this,

With shadowy forests and with champaigns riched,

With plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads,

We make thee lady. (I.i, lines 63-6)

Blessed’s Lear is not a tired aged king who looks forward to relinquishing power. Instead, he is a loving though deluded father bestowing on his daughters an inheritance based on the wealth generated by bountiful land. In this context, the ‘shadowy forests’ and ‘plenteous rivers’ recall Irenius’s description of Ireland in Edmund Spenser’s A View of the State of Ireland (1595 publ. 1633):

And sure it is yet a most beautifull and sweet countrey as any is under heaven, being stored throughout with many goodly rivers, replenished with all sorts of fish most abundantly, sprinkled with many very sweet ilands and goodly lakes…(Spenser 27)

Ireland is sold to potential New Englanders as ‘a most beautifull and sweet [and profitable] countrey’, perhaps in order to justify the needless death of thousands and the cost of the ‘Irish problem’ for the Elizabethan government. Therefore, Ireland is reduced to its property value, an island to be ravaged for its resources. Although Lear already owns the land he is dividing through being its ruler, he breaks it down further into monetary units for his daughters to enjoy. Monarchical power is seemingly usurped by a landlord’s property rights. My interpretation of the map scene teased from Blessed’s film is similar to that of -Read More to avoid disappointment>

Nailed to your Door!

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Early Modern Exchanges
The official blog of Early Modern Exchanges that studies the diverse cultural, historical, economic and social exchanges between England and Europe, European countries, the Old World and the New in the period 1450-1800.